Re: set horizontal-scroll-mode off ineffective, still scrolls

[sampo]

Chet Ramey writes: 

> > Linux mju 2.5.63 #2 Tue Mar 4 03:36:06 WET 2003 i686 unknown  
> >
> > I am running above mentioned bash in a Solaris 2.6 xterm (i.e. I
> > launch xterm in Solaris and then ssh to the linux box). When I
> > upgraded my linux system using RedHat 7.3 an annoying misfeature
> > appeared: when I have long command lines, it scrolls them horizontally
> > instead of wrapping to next line. After some investigation I discovered
> > that this was actually an intentional feature (I can not imagine
> > who would want that to happen as it makes cutting and pasting said
> > long command lines in X impossible) that for some inexplicaple
> > reason defaults to on. 
>
> It does not `default to on'.  The first place to look is ~/.inputrc or
> the file named by the INPUTRC variable.   This is the readline startup
> file and probably where the variable is being enabled.

In de-facto terms it appears to be on, i.e. it behaves as if it was on
so I said it _is_ on. As I noted below, it claims not to be on, but
it still behaves as if it was on. 

> > Thus I say  
> >
> > $ bind 'set horizontal-scroll-mode Off'
> > $ bind -v| grep horizontal-scroll-mode
> > set horizontal-scroll-mode off  
> >
> > Although bash claims that the horizontal scroll mode is off, in reality
> > the undesireable scrolling continues to happen. I have not found out
> > any way to turn this off.
>
> Check the value of the TERM variable and the appropriate termcap
> entry.  Readline needs to be able to move the cursor up and down and
> likes to know whether the terminal supports autowrap.  If your
> terminal type is unknown or the corresponding termcap entry is
> incomplete or incorrect, readline doesn't know how to move the cursor
> and forces horizontal scrolling.  The one you need to make sure about
> is the `up' capability.
.........^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

Thank you. This was a very useful piece of information and probably
should be mentioned in the man page. Historically I believe the
horiz. scrolling was not the default, but I might be wrong. 

As it turns out, although I used vt100 - a very mature terminal
type - the /etc/termcap file was entirely missing in the system
in question. Thus bash probably assumed that the UP capability
is not present. 

My problem is fixed now. Thanks. 

--Sampo
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